thornton's campaign, well, that was the thing, they couldn't ignore mrs. thornton. mrs. thornton was very prominent. her husband, william thornton, had designed the u.s. capitol, was a very close friend of george washington's, was a close friend of thomas jefferson's. so she's a leading lady in society. and so while they wouldn't write about what she was doing directly, i mean, that part, you know, you could tell the word had gotten around that mrs. thornton was trying to get, was trying to help arthur. and so that was kind of, you could kind of see that. nobody ever wrote an article about that, but you heard intimations of that throughout the press coverage of the time. yeah. >> um, a couple questions. you, um, have talked a lot about the different parallels, um, between then and now, and you -- i guess i'd be interested just more frontally talking about race then and now and what parallels you might see. and then, also, um, you're talking about the then and now, it's kind of sounding like we're condemned to repeat history. is that your -- is that your conclusion, or is